It's one of the biggest press scandals ever in Britain, and it involves Rupert Murdoch's vast media empire, one of the country's raciest tabloids, allegations of illegal phone hacking, the slayings of three young girls and the victims of an Islamic militant terrorist attack.

Here are the basics:

• The tabloid News of the World allegedly interfered with police investigations into the disappearance of several girls who were later found murdered.

• A lawyer for the family of one of the slain girls, Milly Dowler, says the paper hacked into the 13-year-old's cell phone after she disappeared in 2002. The paper allegedly deleted some of the girl's messages, thus giving her parents and police false hope that she was still alive.

• Police told the parents of two other girls who were murdered in 2002 that they were investigating whether the News of the World also hacked their phones.

• The tabloid also allegedly hacked into the phones of some victims of the July 7, 2005 terrorist attacks on London's transit system that killed 52 people. The father of one of the victims said police told him he was on a list of names of potential hacking victims.

• Some police officers allegedly accepted bribes from the tabloid in return for information.

• British Prime Minister David Cameron demanded a probe into the scandal and the failure of the police's original phone hacking probe, which did not uncover the latest allegations. Parliament held an emergency debate on the matter.

• Several companies pulled their ads from the News of the World. Bloggers urged advertisers to boycott not just the tabloid but all other media outlets owned by Murdoch's News Corp. The scandal triggered a drop in News Corp. stocks.

• A growing number officials demanded that Rebekah Brooks, editor of the tabloid when the hacking allegedly occurred and now Murdoch's top executive in Britain, be fired. Murdoch issued a statement standing by Brooks.

Rupert Murdoch photo courtesy Getty Images

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U.S. officials believe Pakistan's spy agency ordered the killing of a prominent Pakistani reporter in order to silence him, The New York Times reports.

Classified intelligence indicates that senior officials of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, directed the attack on Syed Saleem Shahzad, two senior administration officials told the Times.

The tortured corpse of Shahzad, 40, was found two days after he was abducted on May 29. He had reported for Asia Times Online, a Hong Kong-based online newspaper, and the Italian news agency Adnkronos International.

Shahzad had been probing alleged ties between Islamic militants and the Pakistani government. In his last story, he had investigated al-Qaida's alleged infiltration of the Pakistani navy. He was killed before the second part of the two-part piece was published.

Before his death Shahzad had told a rights activist he'd been threatened by the ISI, but the agency has denied it was behind the killing.

Pakistan last year was called the deadliest country for journalists.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says 15 reporters have been targeted for their work in Pakistan since the 2002 killing of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. None of their killers have been brought to justice.

The CPJ on Tuesday demanded that Pakistan's president clarify the role of the ISI in Shahzad's death.

Also read:

Shahzad's Death Illustrates the Dangers Facing Reporters in Pakistan

Reporters Under Fire

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The Associated Press announcement this week that it had reached a deal to open a bureau in North Korea raises an obvious question: Will the AP be able to do tough, Western-style reporting in the world's most hermetically sealed nation?

North Korea, after all, ranks next-to-the-bottom on an index measuring press freedom around the world. The government, led by the reclusive (and some say just plain weird) Kim Jong-Il, controls virtually everything its citizenry reads and hears in the media. Freedom of speech and of the press just doesn't exist there.

An AP release says the deal - made with North Korea's state news agency, KCNA - to open a bureau in Pyongyang will be the "first permanent text and photo bureau operated by a Western news organization in the North Korean capital." The AP already has a TV news office in North Korea.

"This agreement between AP and KCNA is historic and significant," AP chief executive Tom Curley said in a statement. "AP is once again being trusted to open a door to better understanding between a nation and the world. We ... look forward to providing coverage for AP's global audience in our usually reliable and insightful way."

It all sounds great. But as AP Seoul bureau chief Jean Lee describes it, "Covering North Korea isn't easy. The state keeps a tight clamp on information... Foreign reporters are typically kept on a short leash, restricted to the hotel and the major sights and kept away from North Koreans."

In response to such concerns, AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll issued a statement:

"The AP operates independently, regardless of location. Period. We have been able to work from Pyongyang as we do elsewhere, by asking questions and seeking to learn more about a country and its people and then doing stories. Our coverage of North Korea from inside and outside the country has been straightforward, insightful and fair. None of it has ever been censored."

Again, sounds great. I'm a former AP staffer myself, and I think the world's oldest news service is to be applauded for being the first to set up shop in the world's most isolated nation.

But I'm also curious to see what happens when the Pyongyang bureau writes a story that's critical of the country's revered leader or its government. How long will it be before the dictator who runs the country decides he's had enough?

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Photo courtesy Getty Images

For as long as I've lived in the greater Philadelphia area (the Delaware Valley to the locals), I've been a fan of Bill Lyon. For many years he was THE sports columnist in a city that has no shortage of them, a city that's as sports-crazy as any I've ever seen.

But after Bill retired from the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2005, the Philly sports world was never quite the same. So it's a thrill to find that Bill has returned to writing a regular column, this time with Philadelphia Sports Daily, a new website. You can read about Bill's new column here.

I first became acquainted with Bill's work when, not long after moving to the area nearly 20 years ago, I became a rabid Philadelphia Eagles fan. (My buds from back home in Wisconsin will cringe, but fear not, fellow cheeseheads, I still root for the Pack - if they're not facing the Eagles.)

In any case, after watching the Eagles on Sunday I'd rifle through the Inquirer sports section on Monday morning (these were the pre-Internet days, kiddies) and immediately latch onto Bill's column. As a lover of football and good writing, reading Bill's unique take on the game, the team, the players and the coaches was, as my kids would say, a totally awesome experience.

Strangely, though, the Bill Lyon column I remember best had only a tangential connection to sports. Written five days after the Sept. 11 attacks, it was ostensibly about the resumption of professional sporting events, which had been postponed immediately following 9/11.

But the column, titled "The games resume, but the view will never be the same," was really about much more - a nation in mourning, patriotism, and the people lost on that horrible day.

In it, Bill ruminated on how the term "hero" is so loosely applied to pro athletes:

"No, they are not necessarily heroes when compared to, say, passengers on a doomed jetliner willing to sacrifice their own lives to thwart another suicide strike.

Or flight attendants who resisted to the very end.

Or people who stayed in stairwells to help others out of a towering inferno.

Or the valorous firefighters, whose job is frighteningly simple: You go into the buildings that everyone else is running out of."

It was the single most moving piece of prose I've read about 9/11. 

Bill is routinely called the greatest sports columnist in Philadelphia history, and to my mind that's a given. But I prefer to think of him as a great columnist, period. Bill writes about sports, yes, but what makes his work shine is its humanity. He knows better than anyone that the stories we remember aren't about batting averages or draft picks. The stories we remember, the ones that stay with us long after the games are over, are about people.

A Gift for Philly Sports Fans: Legendary Columnist Bill Lyon is Back

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Bill Lyon photo courtesy Philadelphia Sports Daily